In Christian circles, evil has long been understood as the lack of good. Evil, we believe, is not a thing in itself, much like darkness is not a thing in itself but the absence of light.
So far so good. But nature abhors a vacuum. When there is a lack of good, the vacancy does not remain empty. When a nation lacks god, it tends to create idols. If it lacks faith in any god, humans do not stop having a need for hope and trust. We may place that hope and trust in other things, or we may opt for cynicism, but the unmet need is going to make itself known either way. Love can also be replaced by different substitutes. The non-religious often consider sex to be the most available substitute for love, and hope that one will lead to the other. The religious (or the checklist-oriented seculars) may fall back on a dependency on rules, and so legalism becomes a cold substitute for love.
This vacuum-effect plays out in so many ways. Someone may need respect -- and decide to buy the appearance of success, or pursue relative respect by congratulating themselves or putting down others. Someone may want a sense of well-being and obtain it through spending, or self-medication. Someone may want a life full of friends, and fill the emptiness by binge-watching content designed to camouflage emotional emptiness and fill it with the company of phantom friends.
But the substitutes tend to leave us hungry for the real thing. Faith, hope, and love remain. The greatest of these is love.
Today, may I notice if I have been using an artificial sweetener in my spiritual life, and seek the Lord.
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